“You have to remember how labor intensive tHe fire department was in those days,” said Boston Deputy Chief Paul Christian, the department’s unofficial historian. “Back then, they were looking more for strong backs and weak minds. And, of course, many Irishmen had experience handling horses, which was a benefit for them here.” The English-speaking Irish were also better equipped for civil-service exams than other immigrant groups, who also joined the department, but in smaller numbers.

“It wasn’t a big-paying job, but it was a steady job,” said Firefighter Jimmy Fitzgerald, president of the Gaelic Brigade. “And when [the Irish] got into it, they made it a better job.” One of the early success stories was John W. Regan, who emigrated from Ireland with his parents as an infant. Regan was appointed in 1854 at the age of 19 and had made captain of an engine company by 25. He would become the first Irishman to advance into the hierarchy of the department, retiring as an assistant chief in 1905.

It was in the 1880s, however, that the Irish truly began to become a force in the department. In 1879, John E. Fitzgerald, a prosperous South Boston real-estate magnate, became the first Irish-American fire commissioner, under Mayor Frederick O. Prince. During his commissionership, the city annexed several surrounding towns, doubling Boston’s size, and requiring even more expansion within the department. Today, the Boston Fire Department’s highest award for merit is named for Commissioner Fitzgerald.

But it was another, unrelated Fitzgerald, who raised the Irish profile in the department to a new level. Inaugurated in 1905, Mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, grandfather of President John F. Kennedy, appointed John A. Mullen as chief of department, the highest uniformed position on the Boston force. Fitzgerald also called upon East Boston ward boss Patrick J. Kennedy, JFK’s paternal grandfather, to serve as his fire commissioner for a brief period. Honey Fitz named Irish-Americans John Grady and Peter F. McDonough to serve as Mullen’s deputy chiefs.

Mayor Fitzgerald’s terms in office coincided with a turning point in the department’s history. For the coming century, with only a few exceptions, Irish-Americans would occupy the department’s highest positions: McDonough, McLaughlin, McSweeney, Reilly, Walsh, Kelleher, Keefe, Cotter, Stapleton, Driscoll, Kelly, and Fitzgerald were in charge. That is not to suggest that success in the department was based strictly on the tribal link. Within Boston’s tumultuous political factions, even your last name could not save you if you backed the wrong horse in the last campaign. “The Irish in Boston were never a homogeneous group and they still aren’t today,” said Chief Christian.

A particularly bitter intra-Irish brawl erupted after the 1914 election of James Michael Curley, who could not abide his predecessor John F. Fitzgerald and proved it by penalizing Honey Fitz’s favored appointees. Upon taking office in 1914, Mayor Curley quickly dispatched Chief John Mullen, replacing him with John Grady and a hand-picked assortment of Irish-American deputies. Mullen, a proud South Boston native, was said to have died of a broken heart within a year of losing his cherished job. So embittered was his family that they refused to give Mullen the traditional firefighter’s funeral. Nonetheless, most of the department was on hand to send off the popular chief.

The high watermark of Irish ascendancy in the department may have come just after World War II, as the city added hundreds of returning GIs to the fire rolls. Records from that era suggest that as many as 80 percent of department members could claim Irish ancestry, although the majority of these were at least one generation removed from Ireland.

GAELIC FIRE BRIGADE

In 1983, a group of Irish-American firefighters came together to form a new organization designed to celebrate their common heritage. Today, the Boston Gaelic Fire Brigade is 800 members strong and features one of New England’s most celebrated pipe-and-drum bands. “When I joined the department in 1990, I couldn’t believe that the Gaelic Brigade was only 7 years old,” said Firefighter John Kilroe. “But I quickly found out why. Twenty-five years ago, you didn’t need a Gaelic Brigade. It would have been redundant.”

Now an acting lieutenant, Kilroe belongs to an age far different from the one his great-grandfather would have found if he had made the journey to Boston in the late 19th century, when the Irish were first appointed in significant numbers to the department. Gone are the horses, the 72-hour shifts, and the rock-bottom salaries. A lot has changed for the Irish in Boston since their earliest experiences with the fire department.

VICTORIES FOR THE WORKING MAN

The postwar period may have seen the greatest contributions by the Irish to the firefighting profession in Boston. Led by the tenacious rank-and-file firefighter Martin Pierce Sr., the Firefighters’ Union was able to push major reforms through the statehouse. Under Pierce’s leadership, guarantees for disability and pension protection for firefighters’ families became the law of the land. Today, Pierce’s son, Martin Jr., serves as the city’s fire commissioner, continuing his father’s legacy in making the job safer.

“I think it’s one of the best professions in the world,” said Commissioner Pierce. “But it’s a dirty job at times.” Perhaps the dirtiest day in recent memory was June 24, 1994, which witnessed the death of Lt. Steve Minehan, a third-generation Boston firefighter who perished while saving two members of his ladder company trapped in a Charlestown warehouse fire. Minehan died 60 years to the day that his grandfather Michael was named district chief.

In his Dorchester neighborhood, where thousands of residents lined the streets for his funeral, plans are now being made to memorialize Lieutenant Minehan by naming a 72-acre park for him. Originally, the park was to be named for Pope John Paul II. But in Boston, you have to work pretty hard to beat the reputation of an Irish fireman. The preserve is currently under construction, right across the street from Florian Hall, where Stevie Minehan’s name has taken its place next to the many Irish who went before him.

Firefighter Gerard Leahy, 52

Firefighter Gerard Leahy’s mother emigrated to South Boston from Oughterard, County Galway, in 1925. And even though his father was American, born in Boston, Leahy grew up with the sense that his family’s residence in the U.S. was only a “temporary relocation” before their eventual return to Ireland.

As a result of burns he sustained in an accident when he was 5, Leahy was not drafted during the Vietnam war, despite his fierce longing to join his neighborhood pals on the front line. After working as a letter carrier for several years, he joined the fire department in 1974. “I love going to work and the people I work with,” said Leahy, a towering man who now, suitably, works on the department’s acclaimed tower company.

In 1986, the first-generation Irish-American finally “returned” to Ireland for the first time, as a piper in the Boston Gaelic Fire Brigade band.

Retired Firefighter Raymond McDonaugh, 74

Firefighter Kevin McDonough, 49

It was a bittersweet day for Ray McDonough, that day in November 1946. The letter confirming his appointment to the fire department finally arrived, on November 21. Sadly, word followed just hours later that his firefighting father, John McDonough, had been killed battling a blaze. Ray took his father’s badge number and proceeded to put in a 43-year career of his own, all of it in the same company, Engine 21.

“I’d do it all over again,” he said. “The job’s been very good to my family.” Still, Ray admits that when his 22-year-old college-graduate son decided to take the test for the department, he was a bit taken aback. “The shock of my life was him telling me that he was going to be a firefighter,” Ray recalled. Today, Kevin works as a fire-prevention specialist.

For generations of Bostonians, the Stapletons of South Boston are the quintessential firefighting family. Blessed with a soft-spoken, endearing demeanor off the clock, the Stapletons have a reputation for getting the job done–and done right.

Three generations have served in the department, beginning with first-generation Irish-American John V. Stapleton (see photo, page 33), who rose through the ranks to become chief of department in 1950. His son Leo followed suit, and became both chief of department and commissioner under Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, before retiring in 1991. Today, Lt. Leo Stapleton II carries on the family name, along with his brother Garrett, who recently returned to active duty after suffering a heart attack.

Even in retirement, Commissioner Stapleton commands a certain celebrity among rank-and-file firefighters, and, indeed, among his own sons. He is also the author of several books of fiction about firefighting. “I just stand back and marvel at what he’s done,” said Garrett, who now owns the Stapleton “ancestral home” in Southie.

The brothers graduated from the same recruit class in 1978. Their grandfather, Chief John V. Stapleton, was nearly killed in a tragic fire in 1942 that claimed the lives of six other firefighters. That didn’t discourage his son Leo, who joined the department’s ranks in 1951. “I really got to love it,” he said. “It challenges your courage and skills.” Like his father, Leo rose through the ranks to become a deputy chief in 1968. In 1984, 60 years to the day that his father was appointed to the department, Lieutenant Stapleton was named both commissioner and chief of department.

“I think my father is still great at what he does,” said his son Leo, who does not feel undue pressure to live up to the high expectations that come with being a Stapleton. “I admire his success and I’m happy with what I’m doing, too. There was never a `following in the footsteps’ approach for me.”

“Most of the guys I hung around with as a kid ended up doing one of three things: the fire, police, or jail time,” said Firefighter Jimmy Fitzgerald. This Charlestown “Townie” chose the first of the three and has never looked back.

A former Green Beret, Fitzy acquired his love of all things Irish from his Donegal-born grandmother. He travels to Ire, land often, in March as leader of the annual trip to march in Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day parade and in December, where, dressed as Santa Claus, he entertains the children of Charlestown, County Mayo. His love of Ireland is evident in his devotion as president of the 800-member-strong Boston Gaelic Fire Brigade.

Commended several times for his heroism, Fitzy received the John E. Fitzgerald Medal in 1979 for rescuing two people who were trapped in a burning building.

Firefighter Kevin McCarthy, 38

Firefighter Billy McCarthy, 46

For the McCarthy brothers, second-generation Irish-Americans with family roots in Kinsale, growing up in Boston meant listening to the Irish Hit Parade radio show and tenor John McCormack every Saturday.

For Billy, in the department since 1978, and Kevin, on the job since ’86, their shared love of Irish music has become a lifelong pursuit. Kevin is the pipe major in the Boston Fire Gaelic Brigade band, while Billy is the drum major.

“We take a lot of pride in it,” said Billy McCarthy. “There’s nothing that makes us feel prouder than representing the Irish and Boston Fire.”

“I think the band symbolizes the old Fire Department, when the immigrant firefighters were the majority,” said Kevin. “We’re very proud of the fact that we’re continuing that tradition.”

Acting Lieutenant John Kilroe, 35

Acting Lt. John Kilroe, whose parents are from Kerry and Roscommon, loves to tell everyone that he’s a “narrowback,” a once-derogatory term used to describe the children of Irish-born natives. After a short stint as a stockbroker, Kilroe decided the nine-to-five rat race was not for him. Appointed to an engine company in 1990, the young father joined forces with two other narrowbacks, a friend whose family emigrated to the U.S. during the Great Famine, and an African-American colleague who claims distant Irish ancestry. Together, says Kilroe, they spend much of their downtime in the station house studying Irish history, frying up Irish breakfasts, and debating the finer points of Angela’s Ashes. As an active member of the Gaelic Brigade and the Irish Cultural Centre, Kilroe’s favorite pastime is learning the Irish language.

Fire Commissioner Martin Pierce Jr., 58

Like Stapleton, the name Pierce has become synonymous with the Boston Fire Department. Today, the keeper of the flame is Commissioner Martin Pierce, son of a legendary firefighter and union leader. Before his retirement in 1980, Martin Pierce Sr. was credited with the passage of landmark legislation to protect firefighters’ benefits, shorten the work week, and provide more jobs.

Martin Jr. followed proudly in his father’s footsteps and, since becoming commissioner in 1991, has quickly solidified his own reputation as a fair and effective administrator, with a simple mantra on firefighting: “Don’t make it complicated–the fire will make it complicated enough.” Today, Pierce spends much of his time at headquarters, but admits that he occasionally misses his earlier years as a rank-and-filer, like his father before him.

“There are a lot of days I wish I were back as a firefighter,” Pierce said.

Firefighter Tracey McGonagle Goodman, 36

Born into the South Boston McGonagle family, Tracey Goodman grew up admiring men like Leo Stapleton, the neighborhood firefighter who seemed larger than life. After eight-and-a-half years on the Coast Guard’s search-and-rescue team, Goodman knew that she, too, was capable of doing the job. In 1998, she became the department’s ninth female firefighter, and the first to join the ranks since 1990.

“I knew I’d be able to handle it,” said Goodman. “I just wasn’t sure if the guys would be able to handle me. But it’s been an unbelievably positive experience. I’m learning from some of the best in the business.”

As a divorced, working mom, Goodman says that she finds the rotating hours of a firefighter perfect for raising her 8-year-old son. And, in the station house, Goodman said she’s actually had a chance to reconnect a bit with her Dublin roots.

“Now more than ever I’m interested in it,” she said. “I think it’s important to keep that tradition alive.”

Retired Firefighter Mattie McDonagh, 71

Senior Firefighter Danny O’Donovan, 59

Originally from Moycullen, County Galway, Mattie McDonagh emigrated to Boston in 1948, only to find himself dodging bullets in Korea several months later–before even attaining American citizenship. He was appointed to the fire department in 1958.

“I was attracted to it because I loved the excitement,” said McDonagh, whose nickname is “The Turk.” But on a hot July 4th in 1971, the real dangers of the job nearly caught up with McDonagh while he was battling a blaze inside a building at Mount Hope Cemetery. A stone slab collapsed, injuring McDonagh and killing his friend and fellow countryman, Jeremiah Collins, a native of County Cork.

Danny O’Donovan hasn’t lost a note off his Cork accent since emigrating to Boston from Skibereen in 1960. His diminutive size and playful nature in the station house have made Danny one of the most well-loved men in the department. And his bravery has brought him three citations for valor. Through the years, he has had his brushes with death, but has avoided serious injury by developing his own sense of impending danger: “When you start to feel your ears buckle, then it’s time to get out,” he said. With less than a year to go before retirement, O’Donovan says he looks forward to a more relaxed life in Florida. “I love the heat,” said O’Donovan. “Maybe that’s why I became a firefighter.”

Captain Terence A. Koen, 63

Captain Terry Koen said his passion for firefighting was set by his mother, “an avid sparkie,” who would take young Terence to watch fires. A second-generation Irish-American with Fermanagh roots, Koen attended Boston College with dreams of becoming a doctor. Instead, he was drafted for service in Korea in 1958 and became a boot-camp bunk mate of Elvis Presley. Perhaps inspired by his association with The King, Koen later started his own band in the 1970s, specializing in Irish tunes.

When Koen gave up a career in pharmaceuticals to join the department in 1968, his friends told him he was crazy. “But it was the greatest thing I ever did,” Koen beams. When he’s not fighting fires, Captain Koen trains other firefighters in counter-terrorism tactics and hazardous-material disposal.

The Firefighter’s Prayer

When I am called to duty, God, Whenever flames may rage Give me strength to save a life Whatever be its age.

Help me embrace a little child Before it is too late Or save an older person firm The horror of that fate.

Enable me to be alert And hear the weakest shout And quickly and efficiently Put the fire out.

I want to fill my calling To give the best in me To guard my friend and neighbor And protect his property

And if according to my fate I am to lose my life Please, bless with your protecting hand My children and my wife.

Denis Healy’s involvement with the AIF actually dates back to 1980, when the late Wallace Carrol, a Chicago businessman and Boston College supporter, invited him to join the American Irish Foundation. When that organization merged with The Ireland Fund in 1987, the American Ireland Fund was born.

Healy has played a key role in raising awareness of the AIF in the Midwest, including serving as dinner chairman for the group’s annual fund-raising event in Chicago. But his civic efforts in the Windy City go even further than that. The 66-year old Healy is vice president of the Irish Fellowship Club, which funds college scholarships for Catholic high school graduates. He chairs the executive committee for Options for People, Inc., a company that brings difficult-to-employ people back into the work force, and is president of Chicago’s United Service Organizations.

Healy’s mother, Margaret Linehan, hailed from Cork City, while his father, Denis Healy, came from Killarney. Married in Ireland in 1927, the couple came to New York the following year. His father worked for the Sheffield Farm Milk Company in the Bronx, while his mother was a homemaker.

Growing up with two brothers (who both became New York City policeman) and two sisters in the High Bridge section of the Bronx near Yankee Stadium, Healy started work at the tender age of five. “Everyone worked in the neighborhood, and we always had jobs,” Healy said. “My first job was shining shoes outside church with my cousin Bobby. I then worked for a local tailor starting in third grade and continued there through high school.”

There was time for play, too, especially in an apartment building filled with Irish families. “There were Griffins upstairs and Kennedys downstairs,” he said. “When we had a party, we would clear out one of our bedrooms, put the chairs in a circle and dance to Irish music.”

After graduating from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, Healy served in the Army. Upon completing his Army service, Healy studied chemistry at the City College of New York during the day, and worked for Colgate-Palmolive at nights. He then moved to Illinois to become Director of Research and Development at the Barr Company. Healy joined Turtle Wax in 1971 and was named CEO in 1999. The 50-year-old company sells car care products in over 60 countries, including Ireland. Shoe care and household cleaners are among its other products and services, as well as 13 state-of-the-art car washes in the Chicago area. Healy is also expanding the company’s international focus via recent acquisitions of two French companies.

It was at an industry convention in Florida that he met his future wife Sondra Hirsch, daughter of Ben Hirsch, founder of Turtle Wax. They raised three children, Dina Marie, Tarin, and current COO of Turtle Wax, Denis John.

As a member of the AIF Board of Directors, Healy is among others who review project submissions and make funding recommendations. Despite Ireland’s booming economy, Healy doesn’t anticipate any changes to the AIF’s mission. “The needs are still there,” he said. “Helping children, fighting drugs, improving education–those are all issues that remain to be addressed.”

The problem was that only a few thousand people thought it a good enough idea to participate. The British and American authorities easily suppressed the rising. The British hanged a few of the leaders and transported sixty-three to Western Australia, where they arrived in 1868, among the last convicts sent to Australia. There was a brief moment of further glamour when sympathisers rescued the exiled young Fenian poet John Boyle O’Reilly (later a moderate), from under the noses of the Perth authorities. Some years later, they also rescued six “soldier Fenians“, who had received the most severe sentences for betraying their military commitments in the rising. In 1870 a second attempt to invade Canada was also a fiasco, but did not involve Ireland directly.

Great patriots seeking to redress cruel injustice? Romantic, persuasive adventurers luring unsettled ex-soldiers and frustrated farm boys into a reckless, ruinous gamble? Keneally hints at the possibilities, without following them through. It reads as if there is a better story trying to get out.

You can argue that the Fenian venture pushed the British government into remedying many of the Irish grievances — or that it frightened the Protestants enough to make independence more difficult. Or that it sparked off a competing strand of clerical nationalism, which was either helpful in widening the cause or unhelpful with its propensity to perceive anti-Catholic plots; or in exacerbating the reverse in Ulster. Again, there seems a fascinating story waiting to be brought out, but it is barely discernible in the trans-Atlantic clutter of secondary facts and personalities.

I ENJOYED the first half much more. This might have been because more of it was set in this country and is a new, copiously researched interpretation of more or less familiar events. It begins with the adventures of Hugh Larkin, a forebear of the author’s wife, a young small farmer from East Galway, who joins a secret “ribbon man” society of rural rebels, perpetrates damage on his landlord’s mansion as a form of pressure for a better deal, and is transported to New South Wales for life in 1833. He spends fourteen years as a convict shepherd and stockman near Cooma and in time becomes a respectable hardware dealer in Goulburn, founder of a solid Australian family.

Larkin’s story is successfully intertwined with that of the “Young Ireland” group of professional and upper-class nationalists, who in 1848 seized the revolutionary opportunity apparently offered by the distress of the Great Famine and the outbreak of similar revolutions or lesser radical activity elsewhere in Europe and the British Isles. The outcome was on the surface much like that of the Fenian revolt eighteen years later. It sent several of the leaders to exile in Van Diemen’s Land. Supporters were able in time to whisk most of them off to the US, which welcomed old-world revolutionaries.

Though Keneally does not make the evaluation strongly enough, the 1848 revolt was indirectly a success. Collectively the risings of that year in many countries put Europe, and in time most of the world, more firmly onto the path of constitutional democracy. In Ireland national consciousness and confidence became greater, and authority very much more attentive to popular grievance.

Keneally says he has tried to be “even handed” as between England and Ireland. This is generally true and the mild — though at times bland — tone contrasts with some other popular writing on the subject, for example the melodramatic (but readable) Trinity by Leon Uris. But Keneally is unsatisfactory about reasons for things. He tends to portray events through his subjects eyes, which results in a mixture of mild hero worship and slaps on the wrist. An unfamiliar reader is also likely to be misled into excessive indignation by seeing the past through modern eyes and by that old historians defect, overlooking the economic aspects. Keneally is also coy about religion, the explosive divider in Ireland and the major reason for the partial failure of Irish nationalism through to the present day.

Landlords, for example, are natural stinkers and scapegoats. Perhaps it could have been made clearer that the landlord, tenant and sub-tenant system was still, in the 1830s and 1840s, the way things had long been in most of the world, going back to the centuries when it maintained local law and order. Nor did the system applying in the period differ much from the ancient Gaelic system or from the similar Gaelic system in the Scottish Highlands, which broke down earlier; nor for that matter so very greatly from that of England or most European countries.

The different religious and to some extent cultural and ethnic background of the Irish landlords created political, psychological and perhaps even moral difficulties, but conventional history would question whether it brought lower living standards, except in the sense that, .aided by the potato, the application of more capital actually increased standards in the 1700s and the land could not support the resulting rapid increase in population. Conventional writing also usually depicts the landlord system as breaking down by the 1840s, in financial stringency and sales to absentee owners. Moreover, similar trends were observed in other countries under pressure of rising rural population.

It is a particular weakness of this book as history that it hardly touches on the density of rural population in Ireland, and the pressure this created for sub-division into ever smaller farm lots and ever more reliance for food on the potato. Yet most of what I have read stresses this as the nub of the problem, complex in origins and much more a source of bitter grievance than politics or religion.

It is surprising, then, that the title of The Great Shame, as revealed in a short, soppy conclusion, relates to the halving of the Irish population between 1845 and modern times. The thought is then loosely tossed in that it was due to bad government from Britain.

Keneally writes readably on the calamitous famine of the late 1840s, with its million deaths and mass emigration. There are similarities with Cecil Woodham-Smith’s 1962 classic, The Great Hunger, but too little of that book’s analysis of how the authorities handled the famine. Keneally leaves the impression that the relief effort was not good enough, which is true. But, as with Tony Blair’s apology, he is vague as to how much responsibility might be attributed to nature and how much to man. The biggest, parsimonious mistake lay in London — rigidly applying “user pays” and free market doctrines — trying to make the Irish landlords pay for relief through introducing the English workhouse system; when the unprecedented scale of the disaster was beyond both. This does not come through clearly enough.

Similarly, while describing the penal clauses on Catholics which applied from the early eighteenth century until 1829, with varying degrees of enforcement, he does not mention the main reason — that the Vatican was backing a rival candidate in the Pretender James III to the London throne of the Hanoverian kings. It is also misleading to attribute the Protestant landlord ascendancy to that good old Irish bogey figure, William of Orange. The religious divisions became very much more difficult than they otherwise might have been because for long periods European hot, cold and civil wars embroiled Ireland as a potential Catholic base against England.

It is disingenuous to blame the Catholic church, as Keneally seems to, for successfully opposing the revolutions. He generally implies that the reason was stuffy conservatism, though he also sometimes acknowledges in passing that the priests thought the revolutions would fail and a lot of people would be needlessly hurt, while if the revolts succeeded the cure might be worse than the disease.

This argument sounds sensible enough, but there was another reason. Europe until after the First World War worked mainly as a continent of landlords, monarchs and empires. Attempts to change this had been in. an atmosphere of anti-clericalism, particularly in France (or in Latin America). The Vatican did not want any more French revolutions.

Keneally says little except in passing about the “Orange” question and the rapid alienation after 1848 of Protestant opinion, especially in Ulster, from the cause of a united Ireland. Yet, as your average nightly television viewer would know, this has been the main barrier — for more than a century — to a united Ireland. Instead, Keneally tends to imply, as ideologues do, that all reasonable people supported his heroes, whereas, as I understand it, Irish opinion on “national” questions last century formed a broad spectrum, prone to occasional bursts of excitement but also apathy.

Another example, closer to home, of Keneally’s seeming reluctance — rather than outright refusal — to embrace points that spoil his story, is his apparent assumption, especially in the section on his kinsman-in-law, that Irish juries toed the line of landlord authority. The tendency of Irish juries to side with their own kind unless local crime rates became unacceptably high was discussed frequently in the nineteenth-century Australian press.

Again, reflecting the view of his subjects, he implies a high status for revolutions. They are certainly rich in romance. But we know a century and a half later that their performance has been poor. Everywhere, nineteenth-century Ireland included, slow, stodgy, messy old constitutional politics has more often delivered the goods. It also would probably have delivered independence anyway to Ireland, other than Northern Ireland, after the First World War. The revolution of that time was supposed to deliver Northern Ireland as well, but we are still waiting.

Nor has nationalism, internationally, had much of a record. In Europe, especially, where thwarted, it became steadily more extreme, without much success. As with Young Ireland and the Fenians, each nationalist movement spun off another that was younger, narrower, more working-class, more prone to violence and extremes of left or right, worse at dealing with the inconvenient minorities most countries have. At the same time, many one-time revolutionaries became moderates. To be “even handed”, a book about nationalists should be less innocent about the downside of chauvinism and revolution generally.

The goal of all the Irish nationalists has been an independent, united Ireland. From my antipodean suburban vantage point, that seems a good idea, especially when contrasted with the creaking and anachronistic semi-colonial system that had evolved in Ireland last century. But it would not have been the cure-all Keneally seems at times to imply.

Rural distress in Ireland gradually eased after the famine, the result of a halved population, successful agitation and several constitutional reform measures prior to independence. Independent governments after 1920 tried various measures of industry protection — one goal of the nationalists — without much success. Distinctive Irish culture and identity has survived within the British Isles mix, in independence or before. But the extent of its survival is not greatly different from that in Wales or Scotland. The Irish personality is more distinctive, but not notably changed by governments.

From about the 1840s to the 1970s it was easy to say and suppose that enlightened, independent, socialist, Labor or whatever government could do wonders. Now the whole world knows better.

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Nowadays there are a few Claritys in most phone books in large American cities, all of them cousins of my family. In America my name is instantly recognized as Irish; in Ireland people wonder if it is French or Italian, or even Russian. From what we know of them, the Clohertys left Roundstone, County Galway, where they had been cabinet- and carriage-makers, in the 1890s.

My mother’s mother, Bridget Murphy, married James Finnegan, a farmer from County Louth, and they emigrated to Yonkers, N.Y., around 1900. Grandpa Finnegan, whose wake I attended in the parlor of 7211 Sixth Ave. in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, peeking from the top of the stairs, was very traditional of belief. He grudgingly allowed a radio to be played only in the back room, where Jack Benny and Fibber McGee and Molly made us all laugh. Grandpa would not listen because, he said, the radio was the devil’s invention, packed with tiny men playing awful music.

That was virtually all I knew about my ancestors, and a roots search was not high on my list of things to do at the time of my arrival in Ireland.

Yet, in the first weeks, as I was walking around Dublin to get the feel of the place and the people, I began to get an odd feeling: My relatives were walking all around me! I saw my “son” Christopher on Nassau Street; my “uncle” Vincent Nolan, sitting on a bench in Stephen’s Green; my “grandfather” in a pub on Baggott Street. Seeing their doubles in Dublin, I experienced a rare epiphany: For the first time in my life, I was a member of the majority. Everybody looked more or less like me and my relatives; An Asian or an African might have had a difficult time telling us apart. To them, I could look, as did my father, like Spencer Tracy or James Cagney.

Like millions before me, I suddenly became interested in my roots, not necessarily to trace myself back to a king or a rebel, but out of raw curiosity about the past. On my father’s side, the trail led to Connemara in County Galway. There, with the help of Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill, the historian and author of several books on the area, we traced Claritys back to the Clohertys, of whom there were still 20 in the Galway phone book. On the way, there was Mary Mannion, a government genealogy expert who was probably a cousin, as Mannions were turned into Mannings in America and my father’s mother was a Manning.

I never found a living relative, but my “father” showed up one night in a pub, looking very, very old. He had taken more than a drop and the publican patted him gently on the back and eased him out the door.

“Will he be all right getting home?” I asked.

The publican pointed out that the old man was dressed carefully by his family in a long coat with a huge Day-Glo orange X on its back and bright patches on the elbows. No driver could possibly fail to see him as he shuffled down the dark road home. “Way to go, dad,” I thought. father died in 1966.

County Louth was more promising, I thought. I knew that my maternal grandmother had grown up in Templetown, Carlingford Loch, long before Irish independence and partition. So there was no talk in her house in Bay Ridge where I grew up, of the Black and Tans or “Brits Out.” The Irish immigrants of her day were more concerned with their future in America, with getting their sons into college and good jobs, their daughters married to bank managers or cops or subway motormen.

Grammy criticized the British rule only once in my memory. Her story concerned an incident on Templetown beach, just across the water from what is now British Northern Ireland. A baby seal flopped up on the sand, and as some children ran over to see it, a British soldier shooed them away. I wonder what she would have thought had she seen Irish television last spring: Irish soldiers and police digging up Templetown beach looking for the body of an Irish woman who had been executed and buried on the beach by the I.R.A. because she tried to comfort a young British soldier who was dying on her Belfast doorstep of I.R.A. gunshot wounds. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!,” probably.

Her husband, James, never discussed the old country in my presence. He drove a Borden’s milk wagon, which he parked in front of our house in the middle of his route. While he ate eggs fried in bacon fat, I was allowed to watch the horse snuffle in his feed bag, but never to give him a piece of sugar.

Once, Grandpa took me on a ride on the Staten Island ferry and bought me an orange cream-filled chocolate bar, its taste still as vivid as a Proust cookie. But there was no talk of the old country. Years later I realized that some of my schoolmates, who marched behind “Brits Out” banners in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue, were the children of Republicans who had lost the Irish civil war. Now, I suspect, they support Gerry Adams and the peace process.

Back in Templetown, I asked where I might find some Murphys. A local man smiled and took me to a small graveyard, where we inspected the headstones. About half of the dead were Murphys, although there were no identifiable kings or rebels.

The Cloherty-Claritys had worked on the docks in New York, and, according to family accounts, some of them founded a carriage-making company, then ran off to South America with the assets. If I get to Brazil or Argentina I will check the phone books. And Tierra del Fuego, too, in case the Cloherty diaspora reached the tip of South America.